


to the dearest we're leaving behind

by Roses_and_rain



Category: Campaign (Podcast)
Genre: Baking, Dialogue Heavy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, The Uhuru Crew Loves Jonnit Kessler, kinda messed up how jonnit's best friends are gonna outlive him huh?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27038815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roses_and_rain/pseuds/Roses_and_rain
Summary: Three scenes in the making of a patchwork family of three. Also, they make apple turnovers!
Relationships: Jonnit Kessler & Gable & Travis Matagot
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	to the dearest we're leaving behind

_Burza Nyth_

Sometime after Gable falls asleep and before the sun comes up, Jonnit feels his eyes flutter open and doesn’t remember closing them. He’s still exhausted from the fight with the Redfeathers, and his first thought is to sink back into sleep. But his eyes focus on the blood-spattered raven draped across the armchair next to the bed, and he remembers that they’re supposed to be keeping Travis awake. 

Jonnit props himself up on his elbow and peers over at his corvid friend. Travis’s breathing seems steady, though his head is flopped onto the cushion at an angle that Jonnit doesn’t think birds’ necks are generally made for. 

“Travis?” he says, and Travis’s beady eyes blink back at him, barely discernible in the dim light filtering in from the hotel window. 

“We should probably keep talking, right? Until sunrise? So, uh, tell me about the fight again. I wanna know what I missed!”

“I said already,” comes Travis’s voice, woozy but present enough for Jonnit’s peace of mind, “I took out his eye, and you did some magic that knocked you out and then _she_ sent the trees because Luminaries forbid she lose a servant.”

“...Travis?”

“Hm?”

“Are you a spy or something?”

“...What?”

“I mean - how are you serving her right now? Why is she cool with you being here with us instead of, like, in the forest with her?”

There’s a pause, so long that Jonnit thinks Travis has dozed off, and then he says,  
“I guess she gets bored of me. It won’t be forever, though. She always calls me back eventually,”  
and there’s a strange note in his voice - in among the bitterness and resignation, something close to reassurance.

Jonnit thinks about that, and about all the stories Travis tells about his too-long life, and all the stories that he doesn’t tell and that Jonnit will never know. How is he supposed to help, he thinks, with all that history stacked against him?

He doesn't know what Travis needs to hear, but he doesn't think it's silence.

“Well,” he says, “I’m glad you’re here with us now.”

“I know,” Travis answers swiftly, “you’re incredibly lucky.”

And Jonnit rolls his eyes and is still glad to have said it.

_midflight i_

“Do you-” Travis starts.

“No, I still don’t have your corner piece,” Gable says. Entirely too impatiently for a conversation about _puzzling_.

“You know, I thought this was supposed to be a teambuilding activity, and I feel like our team would be a lot stronger if you didn’t snap at people who asked perfectly reasonable, relevant questions!”

“Travis, I swear to -” 

The door to the captain’s quarters bursts open.

“Can either of you bake?” asks Jonnit, leaning through the doorway and drumming his fingers on the frame.

“Do you… need us to?” Gable asks doubtfully.

“Will we end up with edible food?” Jonnit parries. A shrewd negotiator, that one. Travis abandons the puzzle to watch the fate of his afternoon being decided.

“Oh, absolutely not,” Gable tells him seriously. 

“Okay, you can peel the apples,” Jonnit announces. “We’re making turnovers!” 

“Okay!” says Gable, getting to their feet.

Travis does not remember agreeing to make turnovers, and he doesn’t think the rest of the crew needs any encouraging to start thinking of him as the kind of person who helps out around the ship. On the other hand, the cabin certainly doesn’t have the promise of pastries to recommend it. Or, alright, the company that the kitchen apparently now does, since both Jonnit and Gable are clearly bought into this baking idea. 

He holds up a hand and Gable takes it automatically to pull him to his feet - funny, he's not sure when they picked up that habit - and they follow Jonnit to the kitchen.

The Wasp is waiting by a tall barrel full of apples when they come in.

“Now Jonnit, I laid out everything you should need on the table so you all wouldn’t be leaving the cupboards out of order, alright? I don’t know if it’ll be exactly like what you’re used to using, though - this is a ship’s kitchen, after all.”

“That sounds great!” Jonnit says, and the Wasp smiles fondly at him before fixing Travis and Gable with a stern gaze. 

“You two are helping with the turnovers?”

They nod.

“Well, I know I can trust two senior crew members like yourselves to leave my kitchen as nice as I’ve left it,” she says mildly.

“Yes ma’am,” Gable says quickly. Travis nods again. It’s almost unheard of for the Wasp to leave anyone alone in the kitchen. Travis has snuck in a few times at night, but even he’s wary of getting on her bad side.

With one last quelling look, the Wasp leaves. When Travis turns to the table, Jonnit’s already measuring out flour in a big tin bowl. He pushes another bowl towards Travis. 

“This is for the apples,” he tells him. “You can leave a little peel on, but take most of it off, and then cut them into bite-size chunks.” 

“Okay. Gable, bring over some crates or something so we can sit.”

“You do it,” Gable says. Travis grabs an apple out of their hand and a paring knife from the table.

“I’m busy cutting apples!” he protests. “And crates are heavy; you’re good with heavy things.” They’ve started dragging the crates over anyway almost before he’s finished the sentence, grumbling - Travis makes out the words “good with heavy things at you.”

"Your incoherent threats always brighten my day," Travis says contentedly, taking his seat.

“So can you guys not cook… like… anything?” asks Jonnit. 

Gable shrugs. “I never really saw the point.”

“Is this related to the eating dirt thing?” Jonnit asks knowingly.

“I mean, maybe -”

“The what?” cuts in Travis, staring between them. “Hang on - don’t lump me in with them like that’s a thing we both do! How many times have you eaten dirt?!”

“It’s a fine source of protein!” Gable says defensively.

“It’s not!” cries Travis in indignation. “What - okay. I do know you, so this makes a lot of sense, but I refuse to argue with you about the nutritional value of dirt. Jonnit, back me up here.”

“No, I kinda want to see where this goes,” says Jonnit, the traitor.

“No, no, the protein thing’s all I’ve got,” Gable says after a moment’s reflection. “Jonnit, how did you learn to make this?”

“Oh… uh, Zana, my sister, she’s one of those weird people who doesn’t like cake? So my dad and I used to make these for her birthday, because it was - it’s right around when all the apples get ripe... in Akaron.” 

Travis isn’t sure exactly what Jonnit left behind to join the Uhuru. Corsairs don't tend to pry too much into their crewmates' backgrounds, which has certainly come in handy what with Travis’s whole deal. But it must be a long time now since Jonnit’s seen his sister.

“That sounds nice,” Gable says quietly. 

“Yeah,” says Jonnit, and his smile only wavers a little when he meets their eyes. “So, uh, Trevor McRib couldn’t cook either, huh?” 

“Funny you should say that,” says Travis, relieved. “He was actually a chef, and I’m sure I could have figured it out if I needed to…” 

An hour later, they have a heaping platter of golden-brown pastries on the table and four more in Travis’s coat pockets - because when he’d reached for a fifth, Jonnit had noticed and slapped his hand away.

“I told Wasp I was making some for the whole crew!”

“Well, if the whole crew is too slow to get to them, that’s hardly my fault,” Travis points out. Jonnit gives him a disapproving look that Travis is pretty sure he picked up from Gable.

“Fine, you win,” Travis says. “The rest of the crew can reap the rewards of our work.” 

He doesn’t get to see that, though, since by the time most of the crew finishes dinner he’s holed up in the captain’s cabin again, with no turnovers of his own because he forgot to take off his coat before sundown and no company but the captain, who’s staring out the window with a decidedly uncorpselike wistfulness. Snatches of a drinking song someone’s started on deck drift in through the cabin window. Travis hums along for a line or two, but it sounds tinny in the relative quiet of the room. 

Then he hears something else.

“- who knows how many already,” comes Jonnit’s voice, moving closer to the door.

“Oh, I know, but they’ll be inside him now - I mean, in the weird way where they’re absorbed and they come back tomorrow, you know?” Gable is saying, “so - don’t look at me like that!” and Jonnit is laughing when they come through the door.

Travis raises his head quickly off his paws.

“Oh good,” he says, “is one of you here to take over zombie babysitting?”

Gable rolls their eyes and throws a turnover at him. “I thought he was your best friend now.”

“He is! Captain, stop looking so gloomy and come join us.”

The captain turns away from the window and crosses the cabin to stand beside Gable and Jonnit.

“Oh, I don’t like this at all,” Gable mutters.

“Yeah, let’s maybe just…” Jonnit takes the captain’s arm and leads him back to the window. “Travis, if he ever comes back he’s definitely killing you first.”

“Absolutely,” says Gable, visibly relaxing.

As his friends sit down on either side of him, Travis sees the captain wink.

_midflight ii_

"Do you ever worry-"

"I certainly try not to."

"-about Jonnit."

"Why would I?"

" _Travis_."

"No, really. I'm not the 'that kid's going places' type, but like... you know how powerful he is. I think Jonnit can handle himself."

"That's not what I meant. It's - I thought we were gonna have longer with Dref."

"Hey, I haven't given up hope for the ghost thing."

...

"Okay, fine. You want to talk about this? You're never going to have long enough with any of them, Gable. Welcome to being us. It's not-"

"I know! I know. You don't have to... it just feels sometimes like it isn't worth it, losing them, and I _hate_ that because it is, Jonnit is and Dref was, this is _better_ than - than being alone...This is better, right?"

"What, are you asking me? I mean, you must have fallen farther than I thought if you're coming to me for emotional counsel. That's not really my thing? Nice to meet you, Travis Matagot, I steal watches... ugh, come here. How can you be too tall to hug right? Has anyone ever told you you're too tall?"

"You, every day."

"Shut up. Okay, I'm only going to say this once, but - yes, it's worth it, it's better, whatever. Don't try and leave again, you'd break Jonnit's heart and at least half the ship would hold it against you forever."

"Oh - no, I'm not going anywhere."


End file.
